Based on archival sources and oral history, this book
reconstructs a border-building process in Namibia that spanned more
than sixty years. The process commenced with the establishment of a
temporary veterinary defence line against rinderpest by the German
colonial authorities in the late nineteenth century and ended with
the construction of a continuous two-metre-high fence by the South
African colonial government sixty years later. This 1250-kilometre
fence divides northern from central Namibia even today. The book
combines a macro and a micro-perspective and differentiates between
cartographic and physical reality. The analysis explores both the
colonial state's agency with regard to veterinary and settlement
policies and the strategies of Africans and Europeans living close
to the border. The analysis also includes the varying perceptions
of individuals and populations who lived further north and south of
the border and describes their experiences crossing the border as
migrant workers, African traders, European settlers and colonial
officials. The Red Line's history is understood as a gradual
process of segregating livestock and people, and of constructing
dichotomies of modern and traditional, healthy and sick, European
and African.
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